INTELLECTUALS & THE DIVISION OF LABOR--SARTRE ET AL

[Dave and Deb Scully]

I think Ken's question is an important one, and one around which I
always find myself a bit light-footed - or maybe light-headed. In
answering Ralph, who made it (I think) somewhat clear that his time is
limited to very select interests - certain streams of jargon being
therefore precluded - the point was raised: if we're going to proceed
with this kind of banter, a) what's the point, and b) to whom is it
directed and to whom is it responsible? Now those are rather obtuse
questions, but they seem to dog critical thinking rather persistently.
When you're faced with situations like you get presently in New York
state, where somebody like Operation Rescue founder (and full-on
agitator) Randall Terry is having a pretty good go at getting into
Congress, where is the responsibility of the "intellectual"? Does it lie
in keeping the faith with certain streams of intellectual development
(philosophical or theological), to the point where people as noted for
their capacity of resistance as Martin Niemuller would endorse the
leadership of a little corporal from the hinterlands in order to
preserve their proper stream of intellectual integrity?...
    I risk losing any concision, here, obviously (I tend to be
delete-button-happy if the first paragraph loses me); it seems to me,
though, that just because somebody professes a certain attraction to
someone like Foucault, or whoever, doesn't mean that they're bound to
support the slip into full-on fascism because of the connections that
have been established around certain names. I'd like to be a bit more
generous than that - I think people read this stuff because it is often
the right time and the right place for them to do so - it transforms
them in a way that they're prepared to be transformed. God (or whatever)
forbid that I should ever imagine that I've obtained a perspective where
I could say categorically that any stream of thought was nothing but BS,
that it lacked "sufficient emancipatory potential". If educating new
budding thinkers is the most useful goal, as Ralph I think quite rightly
says is the case, then no tradition should be summarily denigrated, be
it Hegelian Marxism, postmodernism, deconstruction, or any other
(apologies if I misunderstand you, Ralph, as having done this). It's the
categorization that's the problem, be it according to thinker or to
school. Who can say what the best medicine might be at any given moment
for any given person? As far as I can see, until you get out of Western
culture in order to compare it to something else, anything critical has
some value or other. The challenge, I think, is the ability to critique
that critique without falling into useless generalizations. My gripe
with someone like Randall Terry is that he speaks in jargon which he is
unwilling to develop (this is where I find Adorno so useful) and
legitimate to an unconverted audience - to anyone, in other words, who
doesn't think their salvation is already guaranteed. Do we
(post-)Enlightenment types speak from the same sense of security?

DS.


kenneth.mackendrick wrote:
> 
> Ralph writes:
> 
> ....  Feel free to take up Derrida's texts yourself and teach us
> > something; I have other things to do.
> 
> In the current fray - this statement appears fairly ironic - but
> important.  Like Ralph - Derrida has opted for a similar strategy which
>  places its bets on an idea of freedom - the freedom to pursue what
> one wants - what one thinks is important.  Call this the pusuit of
> reason or the politics of desire.  Both Ralph and Jacques, in tune with
> Adorno, point out that one is not obligated to write about certain
> issues.  Ralph has no obligation to read Derrida and Derrida has no
> obligation to write about democracy.  I suspect a Habermasian might
> disagree - arguing that we need to call one another into account - in
> effect demand a response on moral grounds.  This tingling
> atmosphere holds a lot of tension.  What do we have obligations to
> defend, research, and argue.  To whom are these obligations to - and
> what form should they take.  Pretty standard stuff this.  Obligations,
> responsibility, accountability etc - but important ideas no?
> ken